Frustration and Blame at Lehman Brothers

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Lehman Brothers employees have resigned themselves to the fact that, due to the rapidly plummeting stock price ($4 today, down from $16 last week and $64 last year), the 158-year-old bank will be sold and, consequently, most of them will be dismissed. As with Bear Stearns, the employees are bemoaning their fate to the newspapers, and we feel sympathy for them, especially those who took much of their compensation in shares of the firm: “Everyone is walking around like they have just been Tasered,” one Lehman employee told the Times. “My children’s education fund is wiped out,” said another. And then, just as easily, we stop feeling bad for them: “We’re all a lot poorer,” said one employee to the Journal. Relatively poorer, we might add, but okay. And then: “Of course this is on Dick’s hands,” said another, referring to Richard Fuld, the CEO. “It all happened on his watch.” Really? It’s all his fault? It’s one dude? Not the mortgage brokers and packagers of CDOs and — wait, also, guy who lost his children’s education fund — did you not think to maybe diversify? We’re justsaying.